How do I complain?

If you have a complaint, write to us at Our Address with the details.

What will happen next?

1. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint, providing a copy of this procedure, and asking you to confirm or explain the details of your complaint. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint.  You can expect to receive our acknowledgment letter within three working days of us receiving your complaint.
2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate file for your complaint.
3. If we require further details or clarification of your complaint, we will write and ask for that information. We will deal promptly with all such correspondence.
4. Once we have the information that we require in order to understand your complaint in full, we will start to investigate your complaint. Your complaint will be managed by one of the firm’s client care partners. The investigation will normally involve the following steps.
   • Your complaint will be allocated to one of the client care partners, who will either investigate the complaint themself or will pass your complaint to another appropriate partner for investigation and report. The matter will be allocated in this way within three working days of us receiving all necessary information from you.
   • The investigating person will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply internally to your complaint.
   • The investigating person will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file.
   • A report will then be made internally by the allocated client care partner (where he is personally investigating the matter) or to that client care partner (where he has asked another to investigate).
5. The allocated client care partner will then write to you. They will set out their answers to your complaint and any proposals they may have for resolving it. They will endeavour to do this within 15 working days of the initiation of the steps referred to in paragraph 4.
6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again and ask that our decision is reviewed. We will then arrange to review our decision. A different client care partner will review the original decision within seven working days of your request for a review.  We may, alternatively, invite you to agree to independent mediation within five working days of receiving your request for a review. We will let you know how long this process will take.
7. We will let you know the result of any partner review within five working days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
8. At the conclusion of any complaint to us, we will remind you of your right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman as detailed below.

We endeavour to meet the timescales set out above where possible.  However, in some situations the position may be too complex to enable us to meet these timescales.  We will need your co-operation in responding to any requests for clarification of your complaint in a timely manner – delays in the provision of any such clarification may delay the speed with which we can resolve your complaint.  With your co-operation, we aim to have reached a final determination of your complaint within no more than eight weeks of its inception.

Legal Ombudsman

If after activating our formal Complaints Procedure you are unhappy with the outcome, or if we do not resolve your complaint within eight weeks, you may be able to have recourse to the Legal Ombudsman, an independent complaints body established under the Legal Services Act, who can investigate complaints about the legal service you have received from us.

The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within one year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you.

Your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman may relate to a bill, unless you have initiated a court review of that bill, in which case you will not be able to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman in respect of the same bill.

The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted on telephone no. 0300 555 0333 (Minicom: 0300 555 1777) or by post to PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ. Further information and a complaint form may be obtained from www.legalombudsman.org.uk.